CS267: Lecture 1

Introduction to Parallel Computing

August 27, 2001

Lecturer: Kathy Yelick

Abstract

We motivate high performance computing by showing that numerical
experiments are becoming a third pillar of the scientific method,
complementing theory (because many phenomena are too complicated to
understand theoretically) and conventional experiments (because many
phenomena or devices are too difficult, expensive, slow or dangerous
to measure or prototype in the laboratory). Second, we motivate the
need for parallelism, by showing that despite the exponentially
increasing power of serial processors over time, using many of them in
parallel is essential to solve very large problems. Third, we
described the challenges in writing and understanding parallel
programming, a more difficult activity than conventional serial
programming. Finally, we outlined the structure of the course.